Expanse: Nemesis Games Part 41

Naomi flipped herself through the hatch, then down the hall, too fast for safety. She had minutes. She had less than minutes. Had she really thought she could pry open a locker, pull on a suit, and cycle the airlock? The math had worked at the time. She couldn't imagine it now.

Sarta was somewhere behind her, shouting. Raising the alarm. But Naomi was already around the corner. With sight lines broken, Sarta would have to guess where she'd gone. With luck, it would buy her a few more seconds. She only needed seconds. She only had them. The crew airlock was closed. She cycled the inner door open, then started pulling at lockers. If someone anyone had slipped up. Left one unlocked. The metal clanked and rattled under her fingertips as she tugged and tugged and tugged. Was the umbilical unhooked yet? Were they pulling it in? It seemed like they must be.

There were voices raised from down the hallway. Men and women shouting. One of them was Sarta. Another one was Cyn. She felt herself sobbing and ignored it. She couldn't fail. She couldn't. Not this time. Not now.

For a sickening second, she didn't feel the decompression kit at her waist. She slapped the place where it had been pressed against her skin, and it was there. If she could just get a suit. She tried another locker. Her heart skipped as it opened. A simple EVA suit hung there, suspended in the null g by thin bands of elastic. She reached for it.

She stopped.

They'll know the suit is missing, a small voice said in the back of her mind. They'll know where you've gone. They'll come after you.

Her breath was heavy and fast, her heart racing. The thing she'd been trying not to think for the last hours came to the front of her mind like an old friend. Fewer than fifty meters. It isn't far. You can make it.

She closed the locker. The inner door of the airlock was open now. She launched herself toward it, forcing herself to pant. To hyperoxygenate. She couldn't tell if the dizziness she felt was from too much oxygen or a kind of existential vertigo. She was really going to do this. Naked in the void. She braced her palms against the outer door of the lock. She expected it to be cold. That it was the same temperature as any decking seemed wrong.

Fifty meters in hard vacuum. Maybe less. Maybe it was possible. She couldn't depressurize first. The long seconds matching the airlock to the outer nothingness would take more time than she had. She'd have to blow it out. Full pressure to nothing in a fraction of a second. If she held her breath, it would pop her lungs. She would have to blow herself empty first, let the void into her. All around her heart. Even if it worked, it would do her damage.

She could handle that.

The voices were loud and getting louder. Someone shouted, "Find the f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h!" Cyn sloped in past the lockers. His eyes widened. Sarta was behind him. Good, she thought. Perfect. Let them see. The indicator went from green to red under her thumb. Cyn launched across the room with a wordless cry as the inner door started to close. For a moment, she thought he wouldn't make it, but his hands caught the edge of the door and hauled himself through. She tried to push him back, but he forced his way in.

The airlock door closed behind him, the magnetic seals clacking. Naomi held the handhold by the control panel, waiting for him to hit her. To kick. To put her in a chokehold. The lock was small enough he could put flat palms on both doors. She couldn't get away from him if he attacked, but he didn't. On the other side of the door, Sarta was shouting. Naomi thumbed the emergency override. Three options appeared: OPEN SHIP DOOR, OPEN OUTER DOOR, RETURN TO CYCLE.

"Knuckles, no you hagas eso." His hands were spread before him, wide and empty. "Bist bien. Bist bien alles."

"What are you doing?" Naomi said, surprised to hear the pain in her voice. "Why did you do that?"

"Because you my people, yeah? We're Belt. Born on the float. You, me. Alles la." Tears were welling up in his eyes, waves sheeting over pupil and iris with no gravity to fight the surface tension. "We travel so far, vide uns the promised land. And we go all of us together. Tu y me y alles."

"You aren't saving me," she said.

The big man crossed his arms. "Then I'm die trying. You're my people. We look out for each other. Take care. Not going to stand by while you die. Won't."

She should have been panting, forcing oxygen into her blood. She should have been flying across the emptiness. Cyn floated, turning slowly clockwise a degree at a time, his lips pressed tight, daring her to deny him. Daring her not to see that she was loved here, that she had family here, that she belonged.

Someone hit the inner door of the lock. The voices were louder. More numerous. Naomi knew she could open the door, but if she did, Cyn wouldn't be the only one going out it. If he'd wanted to, he could have beaten her down by now. That he hadn't meant he'd chosen not to. Naomi's heart felt trapped between stones. She couldn't blow the door. She had to. She couldn't kill Cyn. She couldn't save him. Whatever you do now, she thought, you will regret it forever. Seconds pa.s.sed.

Another voice. Filip on the other side of the airlock door. She could hear him shouting, telling her to open the door. He sounded frantic.

How the h.e.l.l did she keep getting into these situations?

"Be strong," Cyn said. "For Filipito, be strong."

"Okay," she said. She pushed her jaw forward in a yawn, opening her throat and her Eustachian tubes. Cyn yelped as she hit OPEN OUTER DOOR. Air tugged at her once, hard, as it evacuated. Adrenaline flooded her blood as she was a.s.saulted invisibly on every square centimeter of flesh. The breath in her lungs rushed out of her, trying to pull her lungs along with it. Cyn grabbed at the airlock frame to keep himself inside, spun, screaming, was gone.

With her lungs empty, there was no reserve. She wasn't holding her breath, surviving off the gas held inside her. Someone could hold their breath for a couple minutes. In the vacuum, she could make it maybe fifteen seconds unaided.

One thousand one. Naomi shifted, hand over hand, to brace against the inner door and look out. The void was there, the great dome of stars. The Chetzemoka glowed in sunlight brighter than the Earth had ever seen. The umbilical hung to her left, too bright to look at directly and more than halfway retracted. Her ribs ached; her eyes ached. Her diaphragm tugged at her gut, trying to inflate lungs squeezed to knots. If she'd had an EVA suit, it would have had att.i.tude thrusters. Without them, she had one chance and no time to think about it. One thousand two. She launched.

For a moment, she saw Cyn in the corner of her eye, a flicker of pale movement. The sun was below her, vast and bright. Radiant heat pressed against her throat and face. The Milky Way spread out, arching across the endless sky. Carbon dioxide built up in her blood; she could feel it in the burning drive to breathe. The Chetzemoka grew slowly larger. One thousand five. Shadows streaked its side, every protrusion and rivet cutting the sunlight into strips of darkness. Everything fell slightly out of focus as her eyes deformed. The stars shifted from diamond points of light to halos to clouds, like the whole universe dissolving. She'd thought it would be silent, but she heard her heartbeat like someone hammering in the next deck.

If I die here, she thought, at least it's beautiful. This would be a lovely way to die. One thousand eight.

The lines of the Chetzemoka's airlock became clear enough to make out. Without magnetic boots, she'd have to reach it with bare handholds, but she was close. She was almost there. The world began to narrow, lights going out in her peripheral vision even as the bright ship grew larger. Pa.s.sing out. She was pa.s.sing out. She plucked the black thumb out of her belt, twisted it to expose the needle, and slammed it into her leg. One thousand ten.

A coldness spread through her, but the colors came back as the sip of hyperoxygenated blood poured through her. An extra bit of breath without having the luxury of breathing out first. The airlock indicator on the Chetzemoka's skin blinked, the emergency response received, the cycle starting. The ship loomed up. She was going to hit, and she couldn't afford to bounce. She put her hands out fingers first, and prepared to crumple as she struck. There were handholds on the surface some were designed, but others were the protrusions of antennae and cameras. She hit with all the same energy she'd kicked off with, the ship slamming into her. She'd known to expect that. She was ready. Her fingers closed on a handhold. The force of the body wrenched her shoulder and elbow, but she didn't lose her grip. One thousand thirteen.

Across the gap, the umbilical was in the Pella. Maneuvering thrusters lit along the warship's side, an ejection ma.s.s of superheated water glowing as it jetted out. Cyn's body he would have lost consciousness by now was out there somewhere, but she couldn't see it. He was already lost, and at least Sarta and Filip and maybe others had seen them both. Cyn and Naomi in the airlock without suits, and then gone. s.p.a.ced. Dead.

Not dead yet. She had to get moving. Her mind had skipped a fraction of a second. She couldn't do that. Naomi pulled herself carefully, skimming along centimeters from the skin of the ship. Too fast, and she wouldn't be able to stop. Too slow and she'd pa.s.s out before she reached safety. All she could do was hope there was a golden middle ground. One thousand... She didn't know anymore. Fifteen? Her whole body was a confusion of pain and animal panic. She couldn't make out the stars at all anymore. The Pella was a blur. The saliva in her mouth bubbled. Boiled. A high, thin whine filled her ears, an illusion of sound where no sound was.

A lot of things happen, she thought, vaguely aware she'd said it to someone else, not long ago. Even this. She felt a wave of peace wash over her. Euphoria. It was a bad sign.

The airlock was there, five meters away. Then four. Her mind skipped, and it was flashing past her. She shot out her arm, grabbing for it, and the frame hit her wrist. She clutched for it, s.n.a.t.c.hing the way Cyn had. She was spinning, the impact turning all her forward momentum angular. But she was over the airlock. Its pale mouth rose up from under her feet and vanished overhead, and back again, and back again. When she reached out, her hand was actually inside the ship, but she couldn't touch the frame. Couldn't pull herself in. The Pella was drifting away, losing its color as her consciousness began to fade. So close. She'd come so very close. Centimeters more, and she might have lived. But s.p.a.ce was unforgiving. People died there all the time. The Pella loosed another plume from its maneuvering thrusters, as if in solemn agreement.

Without thinking, she drew up her leg, the spin increasing as she bent tight. She pulled off the shoe that Sarta hadn't gotten. Her hands felt weird. Clumsy, awkward, more than half numbed. When she stretched back out, the spin slowed to what it had been. She tried to judge the timing, but too little of her mind was left. In the end, she saw the Pella at the end of a distant and darkening hall and threw the shoe at it as hard as her failing strength allowed.

Ejection ma.s.s. The spin slowed. Her hands reached farther into the airlock. She was drifting in. Her heel hit the steel frame and the pain was excruciating and very far away. Her mind blinked. She had an impression of the airlock control panel, the lights trying to impart some critical information. She couldn't see the colors or the symbols on the pad. Her consciousness faded and was gone.

Naomi woke herself up coughing. The deck was pressing against her face. She couldn't tell if she was desperately weak or under high burn. The edges of the airlock around her were fuzzy. She coughed again, a deep wet sound. Images of hemorrhaging lungs filled her mind, but the fluid she brought up was clear. Her hands were almost unrecognizable as hands. Her fingers were thick as sausages, filled with plasma and fluid. Her skin was too hurt to touch, like a bad sunburn. Her joints ached from her toes to the vertebrae in her neck. Her belly felt like someone had kicked her in the gut a couple dozen times.

She forced a breath. She could do that. Inhale, exhale. Something gurgled in her lungs. Not blood, though. She told herself it wasn't blood. She rolled onto her side, tucked her legs up, rose to sitting, and then lay back down again as the world swam. That was more than a g. That had to be more than a g. She couldn't be that weak, could she?

The Chetzemoka hummed under her. She realized vaguely that she was hearing words. Voices. A voice. She knew that didn't make sense, but she didn't know why. She pressed her hands to her face. A storm of emotions ran through her elation, grief, triumph, rage. Her brain wasn't working well enough yet to a.s.sociate them with anything. They just happened, and she watched and waited and gathered her scattered self together. Her hands and feet started hurting, tortured nerve endings screaming at her. She ignored them. Pain was only pain, after all. She'd lived through worse.

Next time, she made it to her feet. The little black thumb of the decompression kit was still lodged in her leg. She pulled it out, lifted it to shoulder high, and dropped it. It fell like maybe one and a half, two gs. That was nice. If she'd felt this bad at just one g, she'd have been worried. She should probably have been worried anyway.

She cycled the inner door open and stumbled out to the cheap locker room. The lockers hung open, EVA suits hanging in them or scattered on the floor. The air bottles were all gone. The voice it was just one voice, but her ears seemed to have lost all their treble and left only an incomprehensible soup of ba.s.s tones was familiar. She thought she should know it. She moved through the abandoned ship. She wondered how long she'd been unconscious, and if there was any way to know where she was, what heading she was on, and how fast she was already traveling.

She reached a control panel and tried to access the navigation system, but it was locked down. As was the comm, the system status, the repair and diagnostics. She laid her forehead against the panel more from exhaustion than despair. The direct contact of bone on ceramic changed the voice, sound conduction through contact, like pressing helmets together and shouting. She knew the voice. She knew the words. "This is Naomi Nagata of the Rocinante. If you get this message, please retransmit. Tell James Holden I am in distress. Comm is not responding. I have no nav control. Please retransmit." She chuckled, coughed up the clear fluid, spat it on the deck, and laughed again. The message was a lie built by Marco to lure Jim to his death.

Every bit of it was true.

Chapter Forty-two: Holden.

Arnold Mfume, who wasn't Alex, came out of the crew quarters still drying his hair. When he saw Holden and Foster the two captains by the coffee machine, he grimaced.

"Running a little late there, Mister Mfume," Foster Sales said.

"Yes, sir. Chava just pointed that out to me. I'm on my way."

"Coffee?" Holden said, holding out a freshly brewed bulb. "Little milk, no sugar. Might not be how you take it, but it's ready now."

"I won't say no," Mfume said with a fast, nervous smile. Holden couldn't place his accent. Flat vowel sounds and swallowed consonants. Wherever it came from, it sounded good on him.

As Holden handed over the bulb, Foster cleared his throat. "You know it's a bad habit to be late for your shift."

"I know, sir. I'm sorry, sir. It won't happen again."

And then, Mfume was gone, bolting up the ladder toward the c.o.c.kpit faster than the lift would have taken him. Foster sighed and shook his head. "It's good being young," he said, "but some people wear it better than others."

Holden tapped in an order for another coffee. "I wouldn't want people to judge me by what I did in my twenties. What about you? Can I get you one?"

"More of a tea man, myself," the other captain said. "If that's an option."

"Don't know that I've ever tried."

"No?"

"There was always coffee."

The morning meeting had started off as just part of the shakedown. Between the new crew and the uncertainty surrounding the ship, it had seemed like a good idea for Holden and Foster Sales to touch base with each other, compare notes, make sure that everything was the way it was supposed to be. The care Foster took to treat the Roci with respect had helped Holden. The new crew wasn't his, and he didn't feel comfortable with them, but they weren't going through the real crew's lockers while no one was looking. And day by day, their presence was growing more familiar. Less strange.

When he called down to engineering and Kazantzakis or Ip replied, it didn't seem as wrong anymore. Finding Sun-yi and Gor wired into gaming goggles shooting the c.r.a.p out of each other in simulated battles because as weapons techs with no one to shoot at they were getting antsy stopped being weird and edged into sort of endearing. Maura Patel was spending her insomniac, sleepless shifts upgrading the tightbeam system. Holden knew it was something Naomi had on her list of projects, but he let Maura do it anyway. And after the long, quiet days in the dock, sleeping in his couch and waking to an empty ship, part of him even appreciated the company. They might be the wrong people, but they were people. Having guests in his house kept him from descending into his fear and anxiety. He was only putting on a brave face, but it actually made him feel a little braver.

"Anything else I should be aware of?" Foster asked.

"Just I want to know if anything happens with the Razorback or the Pella," Holden said. "Or if we get a message from Earth. Amos Burton or my family, either one." As if they were different.

"I think you've made that clear to the crew," Foster said solemnly, but with a glimmer of amus.e.m.e.nt in his eye. Probably Holden had made the point a few times. To everyone. The coffee machine chimed and gave Holden a fresh bulb. Foster made his way to the ladder, and then down toward the torpedo bays where Kazantzakis was cleaning things that were already clean. Holden waited a few seconds and then headed up to the ops deck. Chava, coming down, met him, and they did a little awkward no-you-first dance before they got past each other.

Fred was in the crash couch that he'd appropriated as his office. The hatch to the c.o.c.kpit was closed, but Holden could still hear the wailing of the rai that Mfume liked to listen to during his shift in the pilot's seat. Between that and the coffee, he wouldn't be sleeping, but Fred had put headphones on and so didn't hear Holden coming. The image on his screen was familiar. Marco Inaros, the self-styled head of the Free Navy and public face of the devastation of Earth. And Holden tried the thought carefully in case it hurt too much to think it if Naomi was dead, the man who'd probably killed her. His chest contracted painfully and he pushed the idea away. Thinking about Amos and Naomi was too dangerous.

Fred turned sharply, noticing him, and pulled off the headphones. "Holden. How long have you been there?"

"Just came up."

"Good. Hate to think I'm getting too feeble to know when there's someone in the room. Everything all right?"

"Apart from being in the middle of a system-wide coup with half of my crew missing? Peachy. I mean, I'm not sleeping, and when I do it's nightmares from start to finish, but peachy."

"Well, it was kind of a stupid question. Sorry about that."

Holden sat on the couch beside Fred's and leaned in.

"What do we know about this guy?"

"Inaros?" Fred said. "He was on my short list of possibilities when the rocks dropped. Not the head of it, but in the top five. He leads a splinter group of high-poverty Belters. The kind of people who live in leaky ships and post screeds about taxation being theft. I've spoken to him a time or two, usually to deescalate a situation he wanted to set on fire."

"You think he's the one behind it all?"

Fred sat back, his couch gimbals hissing as they shifted. From the headphones, Holden could hear the man's voice even over the murmurs of rai "We will begin again and remake humanity without the corruption, greed, and hatred that the inner planets could not transcend..."

Fred grunted and shook his head. "I don't see it. Inaros is charismatic. And he's smart. Watching his press release, he certainly thinks he's in charge, but he'd have to. The man's a first-rate narcissist and a s.a.d.i.s.t besides. He'd never knowingly share power with anyone if he could help it. This level of organization? Of coordination? It seems beyond his reach."

"How so?"

Fred gestured toward the screen. The light from it glowed in his eyes; tiny images of Inaros giving his salute. "It doesn't feel right. He's the kind of man who carries a lot of weight in a small circle. Playing at this scale isn't what he does best. He isn't a bad tactician, and the timing of the attacks was showy in a way that seems like he was likely behind them. And he's charming at the negotiating table. But..."

"But?"

"But he's not a first-cla.s.s mind, and this is a first-cla.s.s operation. I don't know how to put it better than that. My gut says that even if he's taking credit for it, he has a handler."

"What would your gut have said before the rocks dropped?"

Fred coughed out a laugh. "That he was an annoyance and a small-time player. So yes, it may just be sour grapes on my part. I'd rather think I was outplayed by someone who's a genius at something grander than self-mythologizing."

"Do you have any idea why Naomi would be on his ship?"

Fred's gaze shifted from the hazy middle distance of thought to directly on Holden. "Is that someplace we want to go right now?"

"Do you?"

"I don't. But I can speculate. Naomi is a Belter, and what I know of her says she grew up in the same circles as Inaros and his crew. I have to a.s.sume they crossed paths before and had some unfinished business. Maybe they were on the same side, maybe they were enemies, maybe both. But not neither."

Holden leaned forward, elbows on his knees. As general as they were, as gently as he'd said them, the words were like little hammer blows. He swallowed.

"Holden. Everyone has a past. Naomi was a grown woman when you met her. You didn't think she'd popped out of the packaging right when you set eyes on her, did you?"

"No, of course not. Everyone on the Canterbury was there because they had a reason. Including me. It's just if there was something big, like 'part of a cabal that went on to destroy Earth' big, I don't know why she wouldn't have told me."

"Did you ask?"

"No. I mean, she knew that I was interested. That she could tell me whatever she wanted to tell me. I figured if she didn't want to, that was up to her."

"And now you're upset that she didn't. So what changed? Why are you ent.i.tled to know things now that you weren't ent.i.tled to know before?"

The rai from the c.o.c.kpit paused, silence filling the ops deck. On Fred's screen, the playback had reached the split circle as it faded to white. "I may," Holden said, "be a small, petty person. But if I'm going to lose her, I at least need to know why."

"We'll see if we can't put you in a position to ask her yourself," Fred said. The music from the c.o.c.kpit kicked in again, and Fred scowled up at the hatch. "If it's any comfort, I think we have a chance. I don't think it'll be long before he's ready to open negotiations."

"No?" Holden said. It was such a thin sliver of hope, but he felt himself jumping to it all the same.

"No. He got the jump on us tactically. I will absolutely give him that. But the next part is where he has to actually consolidate and hold power. That's not tactics. That's strategy, and I don't see anything in him that leads me to think he has a handle on that."

"I do."

Fred waved a hand like Holden's words had been smoke and he was clearing the air. "He's playing a short-run game. Yes, his stock's high right now, and probably will be for a little while. But he's standing in the way of the gates. All of this is to stop people from going out and setting up colonies. But the hunger is already out there. Smith couldn't stop Mars from depopulating itself. Avasarala couldn't put the brakes on the process, and G.o.d knows she tried. Marco Inaros thinks he can do it at the end of a gun, but I don't see it working. Not for long. And he doesn't understand fragility."

"You mean Earth?"